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My hand crashed down on her backside and she grunted, dug her fingers into the hardwood floor that wouldn't allow her purchase.
I rubbed my hand over the cheek I'd just slapped, then hit it as hard as I could, fingers tight together, hand rigid for maximum pain. I hit her two dozen times on that side before changing to the other cheek, giving it the same treatment, watching as her pale skin went from creamy white to pink to angry purplish red. Then I moved down, slapping at the juncture of ass and thigh, making her squirm and pant and knowing if I dipped my fingers between her legs, she'd be wet, even as she grunted and cried out.
Then her thighs, decorating them with handprints and turning them angry red before I said roughly, "Part your legs." When she did, I slapped her there, feeling the fluid on my fingers before I turned her roughly in my arms so she sat more or less splayed on one knee, her legs automatically opening for me. I punished her sex, slapping until she was crying, then started on her breasts, and then I picked her up and carried her down the hall, through the interior entrance to Annie's pain room where I tied her to the cross. All the implements in this room were duplicated in her own cell but I didn't want her there. Whatever she needed from that room I'd have someone else bring it up. If she wanted, she could watch on a monitor, make sure everything was collected.
Ariel was done with that cell.
I chained her to the St. Andrew’s Cross, arms above her head, her back to the room, her legs spread wide, and I cropped every inch of her I could get to, leaving angry red marks over her back and ass and legs, and when she was dripping and I was almost broken with need, I stepped up behind her, my hands over hers where they fisted against the cross and I took her, fucking her hard until we came within seconds of each other.
For a second I rested my head against her naked, sweating shoulder. Then I laughed softly and said, "I'm going to miss you, too, Ariel."
The next day my car drove her into Las Vegas. I transferred a quarter million into an account for her.
We stood in front of the compound on a warm and windy day, the car waiting, the driver one of my best guards. Ariel had a portfolio and a laptop, several boxes of art supplies but only one small bag of clothes. There were tears shining in her eyes that didn't fall. If I'd mentioned them, she'd have blamed the bright desert sunlight.
"What do I do with the extra once I've established myself?" She meant to teach, she thought, and work in an art store or gallery. And take classes. And get a library card so she could take out book after book on the masters. I pointed out she could buy them. She said she thought minimal was okay for the time being and she liked libraries. She didn't know anybody on the outside, she said; she wanted to.
"What extra?" I asked.
"The money. I'll have myself in hand before a quarter of a million."
"Keep it?" I suggested.
She reached out and touched my face, a caress I'd never have allowed in the maze and cells. I kissed her palm as she pulled it away. "I don't want to be your ward or project." Her eyes watched mine. "I want to be your friend now."
"With benefits?" I eyed her.
She rubbed her ass. "Lots of benefits. I need benefits."
"Careful," I said. "You're still in my custody. I could take you downstairs for another goodbye."
"I don't think I can handle any more goodbyes just now." She smiled. "Seriously. Cole. What about the extra. I can't keep it. I have to..." She paused, looking for a word. "Live."
That was a good word. "If that's what you truly want, then do what makes you feel best. You might want to put some in savings. You can make better decisions for yourself when you know it's there."
She nodded thoughtfully. "And the rest?"
"Pick a charity," I said.
And her tears spilled. "Sexual assault victims." She went up on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. "You're a good man, Cole St. Martin."
The plume of dust from the car's passage faded.
"No, I'm not," I said to the fading car.
Then I found a pair of prostitutes and took them into the pain room and paid them not to safe word for a good long time.
I called them both Annie.
5
Annie
August rolled through, breathlessly hot and beautiful. The apartment I'd taken had everything: Balcony from which to simmer and watch the city. AC to keep me from roasting alive. Big beautiful bathroom where no one ever dragged me for an early morning enema.
My phone had stopped ringing. At all. It occurred to me that now I knew pretty much no one and the thought was disconcerting. I didn't need a job and if I was starting a full load of credits – anything to be in and out quickly, school had never been my bailiwick and I was going for a purpose, not as a pleasure – then it made no sense to start a job just to quit it again.
Claude and Chloe were out of the picture. The last I'd heard she really had divorced him and kept the house, and while the authorities weren't thrilled about her being able to just adopt at will, fortune or no fortune, she was being allowed to foster a handful of children considered incorrigible and it was going well.
